This follows the effort to denature, remove the family character of the
wandering Jew in his historic breadth and scope (Ch. 5
above), to cosmopolitanise him, so that he might just fit in ever so
nicely into Palestine and Palestinians, and forget all about Philistines,
idols, false prophets, their track record, the Bible, its track
record, the scientific evaluation of the faith as shown in this site (as
in SMR,
TMR, Scientific Method ...), and become one
more misfit nation, urbane, inundated, defoliated, eviscerated, put it how you
will!

Then, the self-alienating thrust
seems to go, he could enjoy a
nice good old relaxation of the whole thing, having a voluntarily self-destruct
in Israel. In this way, he could become just one of the boys, God
forgotten, meaning, truth and life, in a mix-up of atoms having the remarkable
facility to understand itself. Whether
to adolescents, new to brimming adulthood, or a nation,
new to release, this can have quite an appeal. Avoid the issue! Have
a psychic blow-out, be irrational, just DO it.

However such a course, like any
other form of suicide, and slaughter of truth, unless interrupted by redemption,
has ultimate penalties. If anyone knows the cost of slaughtering truth, it is
Israel. Inducement to slaughter itself might make it easier for this world to
escape the promised penalties for merciless attack on Israel, but it is not to
be made so easy. That cost*1 will continue
rampant until the Lord draws back Israel as in Zechariah 12, Micah 7,
Romans 11, His people, coming for all His saints, and then in that historical
moment that ends the Gospel epoch, arrives to rule on this earth as in
Isaiah 11, 59, Zechariah 12 and Acts 1 with Matthew 24.

Israel self-destruct ? This world
escape penalty for trying to kill it! Is the moon a grain of sand, or truth to
be dispelled by wishing it! That merely increases the lie (I John 2), and the
depth of deception. Man's ideas, being usually wrong concerning God, embracing
idols of the psyche, the mind or the dream, are wrong here also. History will
not self-destruct, and the cost of folly will continue in the accounts, for one
and for all, until repentance comes (Luke 13:1-3).

Leaving this nonchalantly anti-biblical spread exposed in Ch. 5
above, we looked at
predestination in Ch. 6, the knowledge in the deity, which as foreknowledge, is
necessarily and biblically behind predestination (cf.
Index), and saw in short form how it
answers the great philosophic problems in this area, as nothing else
either does or even can (Ch. 6 above) , and is
an indefeasible force behind history, which conforms therefore to the
Lord's word infallibly.

Now we turn to the display of the sheer power of the Lord, as in Psalm 107, and
how this which may seem rambunctious ruin, can teach us what we need to know.
Next, in Chapter 8, we shall return to life in the Lord, and in this case,
to that in terms of families, ordinary families (LIFE IN THE LORD: The
Productive Foursome
Man, Woman, Child and
the Christ,
present through the Spirit of God.

For the present, then, let us relish and realise the
power of God and His mercy in distresses and what is to be learned by the wise,
who would understand the lovingkindness of the Lord, and hence not discount it,
just as the young sometimes discount the love of older youth, not understanding.

We proceed now, to ...

CHAPTER SEVEN

LIFE IN THE LORD:

OBJECTIVE, PERSPECTIVE,
POWER AND PROCEDURE

In being reasonable, one needs to know something of how a thing
proceeds, to what it is directed, by what power it is to be done and in what
perspective it is to be understood. Hence in this Chapter, we look at
biblical treatments, brief and pointed, on these topics. Hence they become
readily examinable.

Elements found are as follows:

UNDERSTANDING THE
LOVINGKINDNESS

OF THE LORD VISION
THROUGH VICISSITUDE

PSALM 107

THE INTRODUCTION

There is love and love, kindness and kindness. As to love, what goes by
this name can be lust, parade, pleasures of seduction, control
paranoia, selfishness possessiveness and many other features. What
is presented as kindness can be ostentation, publicity manipulation,
social ambition and a dictatorial love of moving others, sublimated into
temporary pleasantness.

There is, for most ideal features, a number of erratic foci, of brigandages, of
rapes, ruins, falsetto imitations; and these in that, are not different.

To understand the lovingkindness of the Lord, therefore, is eminently needful.
As HE is the source of man, of love and kindness, the salutary healing wonders
and imbuing glories of the Creator's goodness to our 'kind', and moreover the explanation
for such features appearing at times in our race, it is best to have a
register and a definition of His love and His kindness, indeed of His lovingkindness, His faithful love, and as it may be presented, His mercy.
In Psalm 23, there is a wedding of goodness and mercy, and indeed
they are a beautiful couple.

In Psalm 107, there is a series of tableaux, vignettes, occurrences, and
explanations and desired consequences; and there is shown to
us what is in Psalm 107:43, a nurture for the mind of man, an
instruction for his spirit, leading to the summary: "whoever is wise will observe these things,
and they will understand the lovingkindness of the LORD." This translation has LORD in capitals, because
it presents not just any lord, or any sort of lordship, in some generic fashion,
but GOD, the Creator of heaven earth, the Redeemer for man, and no one else. As
to God, there IS no one else, there is no other.

NOW as to God's goodness and kindness and mercy, the Psalm commences
with a bugle note, "Oh give thanks to
the LORD, for He is good! for His mercy endures forever: let the redeemed
of the Lord say." This comes as pulse
throughout the various instructive and impactive episodes which follow, like a
refrain.

The people who speak (Psalm 107:2) thus are those who have been "redeemed from the hand of
the enemy", and therefore freed, from the discipline of
cold duty, or negligence,
human concepts and plans, for the delight of responsible, loving obedience, past
normal duty because seen in its ultimate light, and wrought in its ultimate
manner. This is that of love, thankfulness, gratitude, realisation of all that is
involved in life in the Lord, for sinners such as we are, and in particular, it
is emphatic for
those who have felt and found as functional in their own lives, the lovingkindness of the Lord.

Thus we have covered verses 1-3.

THE EPISODES

1) Wilderness Wandering - 107:4-9.

Here is the case of want, impervious seeming circumstances, affliction upon
affliction. This leads to the
realisation of personal need parallel to the divine provision, and the necessary
acute linkage with Christ in that call that He hears (Psalm 145). This deadly
seeming drill is transformed into the deity-centred thrill of divine leading. We
recall here that the mercy of God has always been mediated through the Word who
became incarnate (Isaiah 48:16, 45:22ff. with Philippians 2:1-11), and as to the
Lord, He changes not at all! (Psalm 102, Hebrews 1,13:5-8,Malachi 3:6),
His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 90:2, 100:5), for just as He
does not change, and is from everlasting to everlasting, so is His
mercifulness.

What happened then in this series of encounters with trouble, resistance,
difficulties, as if to disorient and become a tale of tedious trauma ? They
fainted, giving a farewell to their self-sufficiency, brought to realise that an
absolute dependence on God is a mere aspect of reality, that a cry to him from
the heart pierces the seemingly impervious. They did not just realise. They
acted. THEN they cried to the Lord in their trouble. They did not try to depict
it in illusory terms. They faced it. "Then He delivered
them out of their distresses."

2) Experience of the Sentence of Bitterness, darkness, looming
death - 107:10-16.

Here there is something more than mere exposure of insufficiency and orientation
to reality, leading to the cry to the Lord. It is deeper. There has been rebellion against truth
(107:11), and the personal nature of the Lord has led to
trouble, punishments that purge, death as a crow seeking carrion; and haughty
and overbearing superiority to the counsel of God has led to strenuous labour
that does not deliver. Will an infant cease to suckle, disdaining its physical
basis and design ? Will a man disdain the command of God ? Will the engine
disregard (if it were able), the engineer ? Will the loved one find tedious the
Creator who has loved ? Yes it may, but in this instance, they repented, and saw
their folly. He kindly "brought down their heart with
labour": then they cry to the Lord, when no one else is helping,
and He saves them.

3) Indulgence of Follies, where healing is needed, and divine
interposition - 107:17-22.

In this case, folly has misled the
erratic, food itself becomes nauseous, affliction becomes a brother, and as
death threatens they cry in their anguish and the Lord hears them. Indeed so
vigorous was their confrontation with woe and weakness, that 'distresses' and
'destructions' lie before them, as the sight through the windscreen of an
aircraft, perhaps like a swirling, blackened tempest. Yet the case is the
challenge; the cry is the route to deliverance whatever the crisis. "He sent His
word and healed them," for it is inconceivable that there should be mere power,
for our design allows for mental, moral, spiritual instruction and physical
actions through us, to us, for us as well as to rebuke us. There is no limit to
the scope of the Lord's intervention, to meet the case in His depth of wisdom,
for His people.

There are several
more vicissitudes, to which we shall look later; but for now, there is something
we have deliberately left out, so that this feature could receive focus by
itself.

THE
ADDITIVES

Each of the above
cases has an additive, individual to itself. Thus while the refrain is the
exclamation,

"OH that men would give thanks to the Lord for His
goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men,"

that is not the end
of that adventure.

1) Thus, there
is for the first case, Wilderness Wandering, this addition:

"For
He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness."

This gives that
personalised, that particularised resonance, that sense of divine feeling in the
midst of the troubles, as if to say,

"Yes, lonely and in travail
as you were, now you have a sense of spiritual satisfaction which is of a kind
not found elsewhere, like cream on bread and milk, sunshine on the sea, peace in
the Autumn woods by a lake; there is a repleteness, a wonder to digest,
for the gift to you is of the Lord, and in it, there is His touch!

In this way, we
see that it is not only that the hand of faith may touch the hem of His garment,
but HE may touch the heart of our life, for each one, with that intimate
relish of reality which is better than life. That, it is like HIS lovingkindness,
it IS better than life, its core, its transcendence, its glory (Psalm
63:3).Notice how in Psalm 63, this is followed by the reflection of the
intensity of his longing, that led to such replete results:

"When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in
the night watches. Because You have been my help, therefore in the shadow
of Your wings I will rejoice. My soul follows close behind You. Your right
hand upholds me" (63:6-7).

Love produces zeal.
Many other things do, of a type. But this zeal is not only warranted, but safe,
sensible and spiritual; and in it is worship.

2) In the
second case noted above, verses 10-16, the addition is this:

"For He has broken the gates of bronze, and cut the bars
of iron in two."

Thus the constraint, the prison sentence style of
rebuke suffered by the pilgrim here, is followed by an exultant liberation, and
so vast was the imprisoning force, that now it is as if not mere wood, but
bronze gates were broken, not merely forced to yield. Again, it is as if bars of confinement
were simply cut, and not merely eroded. It is like the state of mind of Peter,
in prison at the crafty will of King Herod (called 'that fox' by Christ), who
had already killed James, when an angel came and opened the various doors
leading to his miraculous exit. He scarcely realised what had happened,
doors that closed in, now simply incapable of holding him any more,
in a route march of marvels. When the suddenly awakened Peter understood what had
happened, it was as if he were in another world, and he declared this (Acts
12:11):

"Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel,
and has delivered me
from the hand of Herod
and from all the expectation of the Jewish people."

3) In the
third case, the addition is this.

"Let
them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving
and declare His works with rejoicing."

There is the
exultancy of a divine deliverance so immense and intense, that the thankfulness
chimes in like church bells, to announce something that seems parallel for the
individual, to the rescue of the British army, at Dunkirk. Thus the
national can give a sense of glory; but the personal no less, for each person is
made in the image of God, and this being a Psalm for the pilgrim, it is a delight
for the pilgrim nation, whatever form it may take, when any one is so led out of darkness into the light. This now shines on the heart brought right through from devious dealings
in decline, to delighted
understanding and relief.

Had not Britain
foolishly ignored Churchill's warning, to a point near that of pure, unabated
calamity! That was as it is now with those who warn churches today
of their carelessness and seeming indifference to the commandments and fear of
God in which there is security by faith, those who do not concern themselves
with keeping mere commandments, unless they appeal on cultural or psychological
grounds, or seem to pay, or to be cute.

This ecclesiastical
and personal case is parallel to the national one noted above, for there is the payment to be made in due
course. It is either going to be the removal of presumptuous complacency lacking
the fear of God, defying His word, or defiling or ignoring it, or there must be
remedy applied. Otherwise, the bane unremoved, there may come altogether, and
that perhaps sooner than expected, the removal of such churches altogether as
appointed places of shed, reflected light from the Sun of Righteousness,
as revealers of the One with healing in His wings, so that they come to
appear as mere sites for crafty
manipulation of souls, often in an approved, profit-making manner, just like a
business (Revelation 2:5). If there is no shame at sham, then shamed indeed is
the inveterate clinging to guilt, sin through wilfulness, lacking a vast transformation at
the very brink of death.

Remember that in the
case of the Church so addressed in Revelation 2:5: this was no vast failure in
many things, for it had been seeking to reform doctrine back to its
rights, remove those who were false, had laboured patiently, and might have been
thought all but a paragon. However, it had "lost its first love", and since the
OBJECTIVE of the commandment is love with faith unfeigned, a clear conscience
and a pure heart, this was bordering on death. Yet there was the call to
repentance and overcoming, so that if the church revived, well, and
if not, then of course the godly would have to go out of it as in Romans 16:17.
It is not then a matter of rats leaving a sinking ship, but of
a rotting ship, sublime in indifference to the seas, warned and unstable,
sinking to its due doom, while ex-mariners intent on the crossing, go where the
vessel had long failed to proceed. Ours is the
crossing of the Cross, which brings land to the lost, as the seas churn.

But what of this
Church, that of Ephesus, seen in Revelation 2. No wonder then,
if such a church could be delivered back to a fresh and fervent love of the Lord in its beautiful
reality, no more wearied in the greatness of its goings, then its other
excellent features, so far from swallowing up this one, would adorn it the
more! What divine power is involved, for in the case in Psalm 107,
"He sent His word and healed them," Psalm 107:20. Always, it is
the operation of His word which in the power and demonstration of the
Spirit, acts.

Yet whether the fault
be false doctrine, false apostles, or lack of the first beauty and reality of love,
it is not the one or the other, but ALL of the above which are crucial. Sickness
is common; it is health, spiritual health which is to be sought, longed for, not
for its mere pleasure, but for the fulfilment of the beauty of divine holiness.
This leads to the completion of all He has appointed in His love,
to be done by each one of us, and by each Church, indeed by His own body, which is the
entirety of those who believe in Him in all simplicity (Romans 12), who follow His word in all
longing desire and application (Romans 14-15) and seek His will with all thrust.

Moreover, they do not
acknowledge in blind confusion, nor mix with what rebels against and betrays the Lord
(Romans 16:17ff.); for rebellion in the ranks, even if it is by high officers,
is mere hypocrisy, which has its reward. Who wants that, when sincerity of
purpose, fear of God, the love of His holiness and beauty and His peace
beckon, as a man to his hunting dog, alight with desire and duty, delight and
love in his master's dealings, doing and adventures.

UNDERSTANDING THE
LOVINGKINDNESS OF THE LORD
VISION THROUGH VICISSITUDE PSALM 107

Part II

Let us remind
ourselves that in Psalm 107, there is a series of tableaux,
vignettes, occurrences, and explanations and desired consequences; and there
is shown to us what is in Psalm 107:43, a nurture for the mind of man, an
instruction for his spirit, leading to the summary: "whoever is wise will observe these
things, and they will understand the lovingkindness of the LORD."

As to God's goodness and kindness and mercy, the Psalm
commences with a bugle note, "Oh give thanks to the
LORD, for He is good! for His mercy endures forever: let the redeemed of the
Lord say." This comes as pulse throughout the various instructive and
impactive episodes which follow, like a refrain. We have so far considered
three of these, and now we look at two more with some reflections, based on
the closing words of the Psalm.

4) THE PROFUNDITIES THAT INUNDATE Psalm 107:23-32

The vignette here is that of a sudden lustiness in the elements,
an ocean storm, those who venture on the depths, caught in a tempestuous
violence, stunned, faced in awe with their end in terror, calling on the name
of the Lord.

Since this Psalm is about understanding the lovingkindness of the
Lord, we consider carefully, extend our view. This reminds us of the tininess of
the stature of man. The universe has great depth and wonders, great torments
since the Fall (Romans 5:1-12, 8:18-23).

It holds great truth (Psalm 19), but it labours under great
duress since the curse (Romans 5), and the death which it enshrines. Instead of
being simply that marvellous, that magnificent piece of instructibility and awe,
of fascinated interest and joy in life, that conjunct to the realities God made,
with a mind to investigate, a heart to relish and a spirit to thrust happily
into the midst of 'home', man has become a pilgrim and a stranger, like an
alien in this world. It is, at the temporal level, largely being run on wholly
contrary lines to those of God (John 14:30, James 4:4), to the point that James
intimates this: if you love this world, you are an enemy of God. I

if you want, he says, to become a friend of this world, you make
of yourself an enemy of God. If Vanity Fair is your friend, God is your enemy (I
John 2:15-17).

Hence duress surfaces amidst the magnificence of creation, and
strife, which creates nothing, but can cut off what is neither blessed nor
needed. Disciplines direct much to the point that some confused
philosophers imagine that staying alive is the objective, and that in doing so,
we improve. It is nonsense: improvements in the spirit of man are are not a
notable feature of our forlorn and reckless, maniacally killing generation.
Indeed, even since 1914, man in militant zeal has despatched
scores and scores of millions of people, like specks of dust, often with the
additional relish to remove the mentally maimed. Moreover, some
deem human life better to thrust than dust, since various victims can be
made to hurt as an endless seeming stream of zealots kill them. This too is for those who live at
all costs, for their accounts in the system. Nor does man's body move upwards,
that it might abuse freedom the more, in heart, spirit or body; or else find
God. Kinds are the evidence, and the kindness of humankind, even to
itself, is worse than spotty.

In short, some seem to worship the curse that sin brought
to the earth, and use punishment for vision. Many are the tests, challenges and hard places on the way,
therefore, for man in this world. Sometimes the sheer wonder of the power of
the creation - visited on it by God in an initial thrust (for the energy did not
come from nowhere, nothing ever does or can), this tied up in matter, merely to name
one aspect - can be overwhelming. On the oceans those who set forth are readily faced with events towering like vast waves, and they
totter and fear. Such is illustrated, even in
recent times, by both the unsinkable yet sunk Titanic, and the completely safe and
untouchable Lusitania, which was more than touched.

Thus, again, some yachtsmen in the horrendous 1998 Sydney to Hobart race,
were not only facing surging waves, but multi-surface cross-waves on waves,
towering in rampant disregard of uniformity, venturing into wild enormity,
becoming a horror to consider, a breach to experience, some drowning even at
that time in our unsinkable century, which nevertheless is sinking fast.

In Psalm 107, such events are depicted, and the afflicted totter
and reel as if the whole vulnerability to misplaced passion which is found in
man were being given an oceanic depiction, as if the very ocean were crying
this, I too, I can rage and fume and leave nothing to
the imagination! You like it ? then let me illustrate in watery terms what you
too readily produce in your own hearts and conduct, the unthinkable powers, the
ruinous thrusts. See and learn, that man is not made for this; and peace and
not war is what is prosperous. If you INSIST on provoking the mighty powers of
God, then, hold your tongue and purge your heart.

In this Psalm, we see that the message comes through: they are in
a place where ONLY GOD can help them. So they cry to Him. It is a step often
taken too late, and with too little heart (as in Hosea 7:14, where they did not
cry to the Lord with their hearts!), and too lightly, like a formal letter from
which you expect but little in return from some stilted seeming government
department. God moves to man through faith, and where through your lack, this is your expectation,
this is likely to be your response, care of your own frivolously loose
approach to your Maker!

Yet in this case, they cry to the Lord in their trouble and He
"brings them out of their distresses".
How ? In this case, as in that of Mark 4:35-41, there is a command issued
by God, so that the waves are still. It is fascinating how God can take a narrative, like
this, and simply show His power and prevenience by turning it into an actual
episode in life. There were the disciples, there was the storm, their sinking
seemed imminent, and Christ was asleep.

So great was their confidence in Him, that they did not
hesitate to awaken Him (when the peril seemed in earnest to their very lives,
like a typhoon at the start of the shore

line), crying in such a way as to show they fully expected that
were He awake, the problem would be met, overcome and deliverance granted. He
did awake, rebuking their lack of faith (for while they were hoping for such an
outcome, the terror was enough to engulf their attention, just as it threatened
to engulf their bodies), and telling the wind and waves to be muzzled.

So in the Psalm, where the story preceded its enaction, like a
playwright's script, before it is produced before an audience,
"He calms the storm." How often the
Bible tells us a principle or provides a picture or vignette, episode or
tableau, and we have the imagination: yet for all that, we are too slow, and
it has to be enacted before us (in some cases, costing millions of lives, as
when people make foolish alliances with other nations who know not God), before
we understand. Letting us see such things here in Psalm 107, God is showing us
how to understand the lovingkindness of the Lord.

When Christ came, it became inter-personal, Saviour and sinners
in the most categorical possible fashion. Where the work of God is concerned,
what it takes, He does; where the cry for its completion goes up, the power to
perform goes down, whether it be to endure a cross or to win a million souls,
in ways expected or wholly unexpected, as the everlasting Gospel is presented
(Revelation 14).

Thus God may practically elect to turn a narrative into a
happening, or a happening into a warning, a witness or a confirmation. Watch
God! more than you watch the rising temperatures, water levels and wars of wild
confusion, and you do well; but do not shut the eyes, for this is where you are
to act, and as you cry to the Lord, await HIS action, and depend on Him, not on
our own wits (Proverbs 3:3-5).

5) THE
SIMPLICITIES THAT CAN SUBDUE Psalm 107:33-38

Next the vignette provided in the Psalm is on a more mundane
plane. Here is a
pulsation, an abundance of fertility and opportunity, then a decline, followed
by a pick-up, and re-establishment.

This is by no means something happening by necessary laws and
directive principles, as if a cycle were the way to go. Rather the movement from
abundant provision to abasement and need is the response to pride, whereas what
follows in constructive arising, is for those of a willing spirit, no more
drugged by desirers and rotted by ease. When reason returns, as one hopes may be
the case in increasingly and sadly volatile Australia, so that no more are
ill-researched and slatternly expenditures of billions rushed into place, as if
to indulge some dream, when reality calls: then consolidation comes.

A battle is not won by wild reaction, but by intense
concentration on reality, and judicious and adaptable care in meeting
developments, presented to the Lord and confirmed by Him, adapted or
replaced. It is here that fixity without adequate enquiry, except that of purpose, can become merely a
prelude to ruin. Money, reputation or opportunity long in the preparation, is gone in months, and things
needed are lost, while things unneeded run on like blood
from a wound. It needs healing, so that the amplitude of power does not corrupt.

The vignette in Psalm 107 continues with the Lord's quiet and
seemly rescue from that ruin. The people now resume normal ways in a more normal
perspective, and no more to be found are prodigies of arrogance, presumption or
imprudence. Such for example is that of a body vested with control of private
school curricula: they boom, they dictate in this State. You may not refer to mere RESULTS of experiments, oh no, nor
to failures of theories without preference or prejudice, awarding credit where
it is due, nor may you simply exterminate a theory, as in scientific method,
when its forecasts are not verified, nor may you prefer one which has NO
FORECAST UNVERIFIED, as in the biblical case. You may not mention any source
which works for a theory, or any perspective. Philosophy rules science's tools.

A SAD
CASE

You must fondle matter as a brother, and ideas as a tyrant, and
make truth your captive. This is essentially what the relevant Committee has
just done in S.A. (South Australia, not South America), in a virtual buffoonery scarcely
to be believed, a scientistic assault*1,
based ONLY on philosophy WITHOUT warrant, and free from the discipline of what
works! As in aristocracy, it is not what works, but where you come from that
matters. THAT evidently means EVERYTHING! It becomes a virtual Burke's
Peerage, philosophies anointed ... or not, and the desire included.

In other words, what
has to be tested has to come from realms in which their philosophy is invested:
exclusions therefore apply. As when Christ Himself, the Truth, came to earth,
you could believe many different things (just as organic evolutionists have
believed and contest various ideas without joint conviction, quarrelling among
themselves), but one thing you could not follow, and that was the Christ.

In parallel now, the creation which Christ taught,

while you may
believe a variety of discordant evolutionary views (Nilsson, Gould,
Darwin, Simpson, Lovtrup, Lamarck, maybe even Goldschmidt):

this, creation, uncrushed logically or
scientifically for millenia, in science, you may NOT believe; or if you
believe it, you must in scientific education be a secret disciple. Philosophy
has said so, and it is riding so-called science, at the dictate of politics,
which has it so.

Not only does
a variety of contestants in the field of intra-evolutionary debate,
assault the faults of others of its kind, which are indeed there, for none
supports itself in laboratory and history, without simply begging the question,
but this situation is predictable. Why ? It is because failure to face the fundamentals of
logic and empirical research can only lead to the doldrums typical of
reductionism. There, nothing works; the choir is there, but not the music. That
is why the organic evooutionists are playing different things in clouded
contrast and mutual collision. This ? it is to be taught ?

In
contrast, creation is confirmed on all sides, meets every requirement.

It is therefore particularly sad that the concept employed in
this control dictation, namely that scientific method is not even
interested in unselected sources, whatever the results, has annulled its famous
hypothetical contests as a badge of honour, honesty and industry. It is in this
way that it has debased scientific method and left the field to philosophers. In this domain, they are unable
even to support themselves.

Sometimes,
evolutionists try to go a little further: after all they have no ground for
their ideas. You have from big-name evolutionists therefore extreme and wholly
unscientific measures, not verified, most bizarre, where every now and again
some intense concentration of some kind of rays, it is felt, maybe, just maybe
play the builder, and new organisms arise with vastly different construction,
involving masses of new information.

Perhaps, it is
felt, these happen to come, though science in information theory, disavows
such experimentally; or a spectre in some ghostly format, is, rather like a
dog's owner, leading creation up and on, almost as if cajoling it; but this
fantasy like the other, lacks all evidence. Nothing is categorically moving
up, or even displaying new information without intelligence at work. Then
again, you have a set-up where things pause, are punctuated in their delicious
enthusiasm, for no known reason, to make life and make it abundantly, and then
go for it. It is not found, this something... God never is by any other name.

Some like to think
that if you could fiddle things at the embryonic level, it would be easier to
get great big results in due course. That may be so, like 'fiddling' your small
wrist-watch, but it is even harder to do it, when it is so tiny and so
intricate, reportedly millions of times smaller than we can manage. It is moreover never experimentally verified; nor do any of these
arise from scientific data, such as what really IS there: that vast creativity
has sprung huge numbers of designs in one creative phase, on this world, and neither does it
continue to do so, nor can it ever be induced to do so now. And it is in this
muddle and miasma of oddities that the scientific idea is to be abortively
wrapped while creation, which answers all empirical questions adequately and
well, is ruled out.

What is it like ? it is like assuming that whatever else 2 + 2
may equal, they CANNOT (by academic fiat) equal 4. Naturally the results of this
prohibition compromise the objectivity of research, and amount to
authoritarianism, whatever the free play once what works is excluded.

It is THEN, under such duress, that science is no more science.
Verifiable truth is excluded by rote and regimen, just as Christ was, by a more
total death sentence, in His own day. HE was resurrected, and creation remains
incapable of being held by death because in every test, it works, is internally
harmonious, continually verified, incapable of invalidation, and this uniquely.
It is OUT just as mankind has put certain things IN and other OUT for millenia,
and paid the penalty of its obstinacy and its pride.

This is the sort of splendour of spirit without humility of heart
which arrogates the powers of truth and makes short shrift of its substance.
This can only lead to evils innumerable, in multiplied lives, in offence to
children such as Christ gravely warned against, in Matthew 18. As for
me, not for the entirety of this world as my personal property would I join in
the least part in such pseudo-scientific, scientistic, philosophic actions as have here been taken; for not only is the Lord
Jesus Christ the One whom I love, and revere, but God is to be feared; for that
is a clean fear. It loves truth and fears no test. What does impious fiction
matter, when facts are not faced, and all things are not to be tested for
effectiveness!
(I Thessalonians 5:21, Isaiah 41, 43, 48). The Maker of facts challenges us to
have them tested: taste and see!

It is when people take off airily that they may land badly. Such is the
form of the wisdom in Psalm 107 in this vignette, which one has sought to apply
to a practical case, one which threatens the lives and minds of thousands of
children with folly by mandate, talk by dictatorship. exclusion by decree,
making truth to be in manacles, and discussion pre-ordained in direction.

SOME
ILLUSTRATIONS

This sort of up and down movement, the quiet grace and labour
leading to abundance, the pride that disrupts and disperses, the mercy which
picks up the fallen and restores naturalness, is clear in the Bible. Its
sustaining grace in fact can only come by
being based on supernaturalness, for of such we come, and to such we go, and to
walk in that way in the middle of His path, is the way to consistency and quietness. How
dramatically Isaiah 30 puts it:

"In returning and rest you shall be saved; in
quietness and confidence
shall be your strength. But you would not, and you said,
'No, for we will flee on horses.' Therefore you shall flee! and
'We will ride on swift horses'' - therefore those who pursue you shall be swift!"

It is in Isaiah 32 that you see one other result that helps to
have understanding of the lovingkindness of the Lord. Having scolded the vanity
of many, their absurd and false preoccupations, lesser things on top, major
things forgotten forlornly, God proceeds in this helpful manner. They will reap
what they sow, but the Lord has an answer, and will wait till the time is ripe,
and it is then it will be that

"the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the
wilderness
becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as a forest.
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain
in the fruitful field. The work of righteousness will be peace,
and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever."

Here is the Isaiah 52-53 Gospel where His righteousness breaks
sin and brings peace, and to faith in Him who saves, this brings quietness and
assurance for ever (Ephesians 1:11). It is then that you gain UNDERSTANDINGS THAT DWARF
MISUNDERSTANDINGS, and iniquity shuts its mouth.

The reasonableness of
God is profound, intimate, appealing, kindly; and it is the sad and misled part
of man in arrogance, self-sufficiency, alliance with evil, intentional or
lassitudinous, that leads to escalations so terrible that the static to the soul
can become in itself almost a deafening noise. But the Lord is not deaf; and the
cry to Him in earnest supplication, placed on the line which is connected, that
is through Jesus Christ who came not merely to give ear, but to speak to the
listening ear, not only to heal diseases but to speak to those who inherited
them, not only to succour but to save: it is this that is heard (cf. Psalm
145:18ff., Mark 11:23ff., Philippians 4:4-6).

It is not the call
for mere convenience, outside the place offered, for self-advancement, outside
the nature of God, but the call for salvation from sin, restoration to His
divine righteousness through the merits of the Saviour, conferred as a gift,
through justification by faith, through thankfulness for His atoning death and
delight in His dynamic provisions, the call for life in the Lord: it is this
that is heard. Life eternal is LIFE, and its qualities and ways, its
foci and faith, its source and its springs within, these are some of the
beauties that lie in its holiness. Faith cries.

In response the Lord
can break the gates of bronze, the bars of iron, remove the intractable,
demolish the immovable, transcending human proportions at need. He asks
something: it is this, that we declare His works with rejoicing, that we give
thanks to the Lord for His goodness, for His wonderful works to the children of
men. Suffocating pride, self-will, reluctant grudging, this has a place, but not
in heaven. Curmudgeonly self-satisfaction, curling the lip, dripping with scorn
or withdrawing in disbelief, these are certainly options. Their end is like
their beginning: faithless features find lifeless results.